This story might be a little slow being published I'm struggling with the Rick Riordan world. My son wants first priority put on this story. Review please. I need the help on this one. Suggestions, inspirations I need all of it. A few chapters have been written but my story arc ideas are very incomplete.
Black Canary was in lecture mode. "Bodyguards are assigned when a high profile target has no choice but to put themselves in a position of risk in order to carry out a task. All it takes is one moment of inattention to lead to failure. The human body is very susceptible to damage. Don't underestimate the difficulty of the role." The team dutifully watched the footage of the JFK assassination then spent about a half hour analyzing it before moving on.
"In Robin's latest evaluation it was determined that he can hack computers, defuse bombs, and pick locks approximately twice as fast if he is hyper-focused on the task," Black Canary explained.
Robin shifted uncomfortably.
Kid Flash asked, "What do you mean hyper-focused?" Kid Flash was currently poking Robin playfully to try and get the intense look off Rob's face. Kid Flash was hardly focused at all.
Rob grinned a bit and grabbed KF's arm twisting it around his back and putting the larger boy in an arm lock then smirking before letting him go. "Exactly what it sounds like KF. I can at times focus on a task to the exclusion of all else, including my personal safety. My attention is normally divided but special conditions can sort of lock my brain on a single task. It's actually common in people with ADHD. My brain's just wired that way."
"I don't really like the sound of him focusing on something to the exclusion of his personal safety," commented Kaldur. "Would you two stop horsing around and pay attention!"
"I sometimes end up in that mindset when the time's running out and I'm defusing a bomb that's too big to run away from," commented Robin. "Batman's called me on it a few times. He'll be trying to tell me something and I won't be able to register what he's talking about."
"I can see why you might want to focus on something like a really big bomb," admitted Artemis.
"The point is," continued Black Canary. "Robin has a talent that is a huge potential asset but it comes ..."
"It comes with it's own Kryptonite," Conner finished. "He'd be defenceless. If we need his talents on a tight deadline we..."
"We have to work as a team to overcome the Kryptonite. We would have to guard him and Robin would need to trust that he was safe," finished Kaldur.
"And that folks is what we'll be working on today. Robin you will be spending some time working bodyguard duty too but for the most part you'll be hacking under pressure and attempting to achieve hyper-focus."
It was more difficult that it sounded. They practised with paint guns in addition to hand to hand combat. Robin was put in a white jumpsuit and each drop of paint was logged as a fail. Audio distractions were broadcast. Artemis had little success because she was too dependant on ranged attacks. Miss Martian was usually too distracted trying to maintain the link. Kaldur could not be an effective guard and co-ordinate a mission at the same time. It just did not work. Kid Flash could do it fairly well but Superboy was by far the best at the job. He didn't tend to distract Robin with chatter. He had an inherent economy of motion and the fact that he could stand between Robin and a threat as a bulletproof shield made him perfect for the job.
The first time Rob was hit he acted out a huge melodramatic death scene. Artemis, who had let him get hit, snorted with laughter then kicked him.
On Miss Martian's first failure, KF Zipped over and sobbed in ridiculous pantomime then hummed the 'Death March' by Chopin while carrying Rob over to the trash can to dump his 'dead' body in it. Rob flipped down before he actually got dumped in the trash.
On Kaldur's third failure Robin commented that if Kaldur kept letting him get paint bombed, whoever did the laundry, really was going to kill him. Kaldur who had been getting quite annoyed at all the silliness decided to help Robin with that little problem and Robin ended up drenched courtesy of a certain Atlantian's water powers.
Canary called a break. Robin and Kid Flash were told in no uncertain terms to stop goofing around. Rob got changed into a fresh dry white jumpsuit. He was serious for the rest of the afternoon but his hyper-focus scores tanked after the lecture and he just got progressively more stressed out. Canary rubbed her face in frustration. For the last half of the afternoon they'd focused on just Superboy and Robin because it was the most successful pair up.
Conner was ready to throttle Robin by the end of the day because Robin was rarely able to do this stupid special thing he was supposed to be able to do. Everyone could tell. Rob'd flinch trying to protect himself or instinctively throw a batarang at a threat and his performance times were only sometimes in the zone they were hoping for. "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST TRUST ME!" Roared Superboy in fury just before Black Canary called a break.
Robin, his nerves completely frayed, took off and hid.
"Conner," she explained quietly. "Hyper focus is not a natural thing for anyone. It is shutting down part of his natural survival instinct. Massive adrenaline or enthusiastic interest usually trigger it. The five hour training session is probably interfering with his success at this point."
"So fear or fun you mean?" Conner asked looking confused. He could hear Wally calling for Robin to come play video games. Robin wasn't answering. Frankly Conner wasn't used to Robin failing at something.
Robin disappeared for the rest of the day. When Black Canary tried to track him down it turned out he'd gone back to the Batcave and was punishing the aerial equipment there for the next several hours. Batman tried to get him to come back but he refused even under threat of sitting out the next mission.
Wally texted Roy about it because it was rare for Rob to just freak out like that. Roy called them a bunch of bloody idiots. He got Canary on the phone.
"So you thought it would be a good idea to single out your youngest team member who also happens to be a non-meta and yell at him for not playing helpless for hours on end and then you get frustrated with him when he effectively tells you where you can shove your training and storms off refusing to co-operate any more?" Roy yelled. "You're freaking bloody ignorant idiots. How for the love of Joker Venom is that supposed to make him feel like anything but a liability to the team? Forget about your stupid hyper-focus for a minute and tell me if it's worth it."
Conner could hear Roy yelling at Canary on the other end of the phone. He needed someone to talk to about what he was hearing but he wasn't supposed to eavesdrop so it couldn't be Canary. Normally he'd ask Robin about something like this. He decided to try talking to Kaldur.
"Roy is right," Kaldur eventually announced. "If hyper-focus is achieved through fear or fun these training exercises are set up for Robin to fail. There is nothing fun about being intentionally placed in a position of vulnerability, we got ticked at him for horsing around and trying to make it fun and ..."
"And if he trusts me he shouldn't be afraid," finished Conner regretting loosing his temper.
"You know what doesn't help?" offered Wally who'd come to talk to Kaldur about pretty much the exact same thing as Conner. "Rob isn't usually terribly afraid for himself. He's usually afraid for others."
Conner looked insulted but it looked like Kaldur was listening so naturally Wally tried to talk to the person who was looking pissed. "It's not about anyone's abilities. Gah, how do I explain this," and now Black Canary was off the phone with Roy and listening too because she too had wanted to talk to Kaldur about this.
"In his head watching someone he cares about get hurt, hurts more then if he just took the hit himself," she finished.
"Exactly!" agreed Wally.
Hacking or defusing a bomb twice as fast was a golden carrot. It sounded great. Robin dutifully sat out the next mission as punishment for refusing to co-operate with training.
Roy had burned off Robin's annoyance at the whole defenceless protected flower thing after a nice long motorcycle ride followed by a healthy session of bad guy butt kicking and greasy unhealthy food consumption but Rob knew he wasn't mission ready so he hadn't argued on sitting out the mission at all.
Robin still went patrolling with Batman. He trusted Batman to pick up his slack even if he was off his game a little. The next week and a half patrolling with Batman proved he wasn't mission ready.
Batman roared at him and gave him escalating punishments when several times over the next few patrols Robin slipped into hyper-focus mode paying exclusive attention to something; be it a combat, a crime scene investigation or hacking, putting himself in a position of risk.
Robin didn't argue. He took the punishments calmly. He actually seemed to finally relax while scrubbing the Batcave with a toothbrush, and...
"Robin what are you doing?" Batman looked at Robin confused and irritated.
"Working ahead in math while cleaning the cave."
"Why are you writing with the pencil in your toes?" demanded Batman.
"Building fine motor control in my toes helps with my agility. I like math and you said I couldn't play music in the cave because it bothers the bats and you took away my mp3 player but my brain was bored just scrubbing stuff with a toothbrush."
I have the weirdest child on the face of the planet thought Batman.
"Batman?" asked Robin tentatively. "The team's mission yesterday didn't go so well. I've been getting annoyed emails because, well because I didn't show and they figure I let them down and they needed a hacker."
Batman grunted. He hoped Robin had learned that you don't just walk out on training. He so didn't want to have a discussion with Robin who had one bare foot holding a pencil doing math and who was still scrubbing away with the toothbrush in hand. It felt like Robin was being completely disrespectful half ignoring him while trying to hold a conversation. "If you want to talk to me put your sock and boot back on, put down the toothbrush and talk to me!" he growled.
Instead Robin flipped open his holo-watch and composed an email. "Sir, I don't understand what you want of me. You've been training me for years to pay attention to my surroundings. You've always told me not to put the mission before my personal safety. You are furious with me for hyper-focusing but you've been asking me to train myself to let it happen. Everyone is angry with me and I don't know what I am supposed to do." He hit send.
Batman read the email then stalked off to go research ADHD again. About two hours later he called out, "The punishment is cancelled. Put your shoe on. We need to talk to the team and Canary." He looked down from where he was standing over Robin. "That's not actually half bad ,... toe writing."
Turned out the ADHD brain often paid better attention to emotional or stressful discussions with the aid of motion or fidgeting. Batman and Bruce knew this but it was an easy detail to forget. If he really needed Robin or Dick to think about something movement helped. Basketball, stretching, he had to be doing something. It wasn't going to be toe writing and scrubbing the Batcave. Batman growled a little and headed to the zeta terminal.
The team and Canary sat around one of the old conference tables. Batman didn't sit. "There will be no more hyper-focus training. The entire team will reinforce guard duty training. There have been a lot of injuries."
"Why is the hyper focus training stopping?" asked Canary.
With someone finally acting as his advocate Robin spoke up. "BC if I throw a baseball at your head do you think about how to catch it or how to get out of the way or do you just do it? I don't hold back when I'm hacking. I'm not intentionally going half speed. I have had to work very hard to learn to focus in ways that keep myself and others safe; to scan through everything demanding my attention."
Robin didn't sound his normal cocky self. He sounded defensive and uncomfortable. He kept looking to Batman.
Canary sighed, "Encouraging hyper-focus undoes that discipline. It doesn't just put you at risk when you're defusing the bomb, it puts you at risk all the time. Robin I didn't mean to imply you were intentionally going half speed."
Conner slouched down in his seat because that was kind of what he'd thought. He had trouble understanding this.
Robin nodded awkwardly. "I'd have been a liability on the last mission. It messed with my head big time. Batman's been on my case about it all week because all of a sudden I'll zero in on something unintentionally and not see the goon or the gun or the whatever."
Hearing that, Kaldur looked rather defeated because he'd assumed Robin had gone off on some kind of juvenile pout and he really should have been defending him not letting the team attack him. They should know each other better than this by now. Robin, when it came to missions, was never juvenile. This whole training fiasco had been brutal on their youngest member. Megan had been the only one consistently defending Robin. She kept saying something was wrong and that Robin had been trying but that he didn't understand what was wrong so he couldn't communicate it.
Batman nodded for Robin that it was time to go.
Wally called out, "Dude? You're in the company of misfits here. We roll with people the way they are. Seriously ...a speedster, a Martian, a Kryptonian clone, an Atlantian, a medival weapon specialist and a ADHD ninja, come on; we all fit in sooo well."
Rob flashed him a quick smirk of a smile and a backhanded wave but this wasn't anyone's idea of a fun way to be the centre of attention and it was obvious Rob just wanted out of there.
Once they were back at the cave and the capes were off Bruce pulled Dick into a hug. There was nothing wrong with ADHD. A lot of the most incredible people through history were wired that way. It was just a little difficult to be understanding sometimes. "Let's go shoot some hoops chum."
"So," spoke Kaldur tiredly. "Is it reasonable to assign Superboy or Kid Flash as Robin's partner to guard him as a precaution if it is likely that Robin will be doing a mission critical focused activity?"
"It is both reasonable and prudent," agreed Canary.
"It's not like he didn't have someone keeping guard before when he was hacking from an exposed location or something," protested Artemis. "We just know now that when things really get dicey it's a good idea to be a little more vigilant on his behalf because there's a chance he's checked out on our behalf, nobody home but me and the computer or bomb or whatever, you know."
On our behalf... thought Conner determined to keep an eye on the count down timer next time Robin was defusing a bomb. Protect him when he needs protecting but don't do that thing Red Arrow said about not recognizing his combat skills contributions. Okay I can do that.